There’s a “don’t change it if it ain’t broke” mentality in Swiss watchmaking. Progress is slow, and it often seems that there’s a general distrust of change. An example of this is in the mechanical movements that power most of our watches. Chances are, you have at least one watch with an ETA 2824 or a movement based on the 2824 in your collection. If you’re like me, you have several. For Swiss-made watches of a certain price point, they are the standard. They are “workhorses” that, while not the most feature-rich, offer reliability and serviceability. And part of the reason for that is that the design has been around, largely unchanged, since the 1970s (the 2824-2, which is the current standard, was released in the 80s).
That is, until 2013, when ETA launched 80-hour movements based on the 2824-2. First debuted in a Tissot as the Powermatic 80, ETA nearly doubled the 2824’s power reserve by slowing the escapement’s frequency from 28,800bph to 21,600bph, introducing synthetic components, and increasing the mainspring’s capacity. The biggest update to the 2824 format in a generation (though they no longer use that numbering), as ETA is part of Swatch, these movements gave the group’s catalog of brands under Omega an unexpected edge in the market, but were not available to third-party brands, thus limiting their overall impact.
In 2003, Sellita began supplying movements to third parties as a response to Swatch’s 2002 announcement that it would seek to limit supplying outside of its own group. Based on ETA’s expired patents, Sellita’s “clones” offered alternatives that wouldn’t require brands to retool for a new movement. But, as “clones,” they also didn’t offer anything new in terms of core specs or movement design. Specifically, the SW200, their 2824 replacement, had the same frequency, power reserve, gear train, and so on. With that said, in the years since, Sellita has added a large number of available complications, giving brands variety in functionality if desired.
Zach Weiss
2026-01-26 20:00:00